AN IMAGINARY DIALOGUE WITH A GUIDE:

I find myself in an inky void. It is peaceful.  I mentally try to summon a guide.  A presence soon responds, but it is hard to know how long it took because time seems to have a different flow over "there," if it still exists at all.  When my guide arrives, I mentally ask if I can pose a few questions.  My request is granted.  I ask if it is OK to be a man-for-others in the astral realm.  Guide: "What do you mean?"  Don: "Can I ask questions in behalf of others who would like to explore in this way, but cannot for various reasons."  Guide: "Fire away."  Don:  "Is it possible to explore and establish new protoculs for retrievals?  Can I be directed to trapped spirits whose identity can be determined and checked by obituaries or some other means?"   Guide: "Your perceptual skills may not be adequate to gain such clarity."  Don: "I just asked if this goal is worth pursuing."  Guide: "If you want to do retrievals, you just have to trust that your guides are directing you to the right cases for your current level of development."  Don: "OK, but why can't that ever include information that might lead to obituaries (e. g. name, date and place of death)?" I receive a rote, but it takes a while to unravel it.  When I succeed, I realize that the guide has informed me: "The cases we select are based on how prepared spirits are for retrieval.  Spirits are located in planes according to like attracts like and their energetic-make-up must be adjusted to be compatible to the higher plane to which  they are being retrieved.  This takes planning and several preparatory visits to the retrievees.  Retrievees must be selected through this process, not to satisfy your need for proof."  Don: "But I just asked you if I can function over here as a man-for-others and you said, 'yes.'  I'm not asking that every case lead to an obituary, just some cases."  Guide: "No can do!"  Don: "You're just saying that because you are merely a figment of my imagination, aren't you?"  Guide: "Well, I am a part of your I-There."  Don: "Ah, just the astral jargon I might expect.  I now realize that this is just a lucid dream about astral exploration.  My unconscious is establishing roadblocks to verification because it doesn't want the realism of this state to be discredited.  It demands that I respect the illusion."  Guide: "Bingo!  But you are drawing a false distinction between astral states and lucid dreams.  Both states are variations of the same astral conditions."  Don: "That's a bogus distinction and I have more constructive things to do with this state than perceive your double-talk.  I think I'll create a romantic fantasy instead."  Guide: "OK, have it your own way. Enjoy!  Hope to dialogue with you again."  Don: "Duh!"

Dear Don

You appear to be a highly educated and highly verbal individual, and someone who pays attention to detail.

At the risk of starting an argument, which is not my intention, I would like to point out that it appears you have misspelled the word protocol not once but twice. I find this peculiar because it is not consistent with the image you present. Perhaps you are not what you say you are.?

On the other hand, perhaps you just don't like bothering with spelling. In that case, the unique spelling becomes an example of how easily things can be skewed. Maybe the difference between an OBE and a lucid dream is as minute and subtle as the difference between the correct and incorrect spelling of a word. Or maybe there is no important and significant difference between the two.

Lucy,
I would give Don that benefit of the doubt on spelling.
I know it is one of my weaknesses.  It doesn't make me any less intellegent.  Just ignorant to the spellings.
My kids have teased me about my spellings (and grammar) for years but, they have come to notice I have improved.

It is a pet peeve of mine for my own lack of spelling knowledge.  Hence, I use Google a lot to double check my spellings. hehe!

or even say, if your romantic fantasy did something totally unexpected and you yelled out HEY! thats not how I expected u to act so crazy!

when people act differently than expected in these areas, it tends to make one "wake up" in the surprise of it all. then the part of you that is interacting proceeds to go and see if this is "real."
it becomes real when the person returns again and again to your dream area and starts to tell you stuff you never had a clue about. you research what they told you and find verification they were right on!
sometimes if they tell you something you wish weren't true, you want to say, no, it was just a dream, because if you admit what they said was indeed true, it means you have some hard work to do on your belief system but its worth it because the truth makes you freer.

love, alysia

Don:

Perhaps you haven't been involved with retrievels in a genuine way, because you aren't an ideal candidate to do so.

For example, you would probably expect any spirits you make contact with to always operate according to how you say the Bible says they should operate. What if reality isn't precisely as your Biblical interpretations suggest? How could light beings possibly work with you, if you try to present the guidelines as to how they should operate?

As you probably know by now, I believe in Christ not because the Bible told me so, but because of experiences and messages I've received. If I want to know what the words of Jesus were I prefer to go to the Gospels rather than a channeled source, because as least ways from a historical perspective, I can see a connection.

However, I don't assume that everything the Bible says is true. I figure it was put together by different men who were open to divine inspiration, shall I say channeled information, to varying degrees. For example, when Moses claimed that God gave him extensive guidelines for things such as animal sacrifices, how to treat slaves, when to stone people and when to kill them, what to do with first borns, about how a woman is impure for 4 weeks after giving birth to a boy and twice as long after giving birth to a girl, and what type of animal sacrifices she should do in order to atone things, I have a hard time believing that Moses actually received these instructions from God.

When it comes to retrievels, one needs to start from the right heart space and state of mind, and can't be thinking in terms of some beings are simply demons, and should be treated accordingly. One has to have the understanding that they too could've become a spirit who manifests in an evil way, if things didn't work out so one chose God and his love and light instead.  

When I compare myself to spirits who ended up manifesting in a negative way to myself, I don't think in terms of "I'm superior to them." I think in terms of: "I'm just one small part of one huge self, and I'm so incredibly fortunate that I ended up manifesting in a manner that enables me to chose God, love and light, rather than a dark way. I view spirits who ended up getting involved with a dark way, as parts of my greater self that need help in seeing the light, so they too can move on to a really wonderful way of existing.

I don't mean that one should be a half witted fool when one meets a spirit who has evolved in a dark way. Sometimes a show of strength is needed. However, one should always respond to such a spirit with love in one's heart, or one ends up taking approach that is somewhat similar to their approach. Either one takes a non-judgmental love approach, or an adversarial approach.

Regarding receiving retrievel confirmations from the spirit beings I work with, I received some early on, but eventually things developed to the point where I knew I could trust them, and there was no need for them to go through the impracticality of providing me with evidence over and over and over again.

If you think about it, it is possible that conformational evidence could come from a deceptive spirit. Therefore, it wouldn't prove anything. The only way to get around this conundrum, is to come to the point where you know you can trust and have faith in the spirits you work with.
(Please read the above paragraph again. It is an important point I've made to you before that you didn't respond to.)

I'm able to help in the way I do, partly because I had enough faith to go through the extensive energetic work I had to go through in order that I can help. Sometimes this energetic work would be really intense. How would you feel about just sitting or laying there as the necessary energetic work was performed on you? Would you be more likely to believe that beings who represent the light are helping you, or that demonic forces are deceiving you? Until one can become a helper, one needs to get to the point where one trusts those who help one become a helper. Is such a thing possible, if one is overly quick to demonize those who try to help, because they don't follow the protocol one believes they should follow?  At some point one needs to get to the point where one decides according to one's heart and therefore a deeper way of understanding, rather than one's textbook way of looking at things. A textbook understanding goes only so far. A deep feeling of love goes further.

HI Lucy-
I definitely am not whom I say I am.  Even if I were, after saying it I wouldn't be. So there!

However, I type with two or three fingers, rapidly, without proofing sometimes (ulp - mea culpa!) and I'm a bit careless at times.

By the way - I identify myself as an old hippie - so one would expect that I'd be tuned into some of that stuff. I got into math and physics in later life. For me, this arouses the tension of trying to make sense of both what we used to pay the guy on the street corner $5 to experience, as well as the logic of science which imposes itself upon us.

Mebbe 'f I regress a tad it'd be mo betta, huh? By the way - that stuff's a deliriant and I think they almost all OD'd on it. Blecch.    - I'd nominate it for use in trial by ordeal!

Incidently, now that you're counting, I only misspellt "protocol" wrongly once - the title isn't mine. You might want to keep in mind that there are just three kinds of people in the world - Those who can add, and those who can't.

dave

Albert,

No, I would expect any retrieval guide to respond unpredictably and in some ways contrary to my preconceptions. Otherwise, I'd suspect that my unconscious created the experience to support my preconceptions.  The formulaic nature of retrieval experiences reported on this site induces just as much skepticism in me as the striking lack of impressive verification.

In my lucid dreams--whether bogus OBEs or retrievals--the events are alarmingly predictable.  We are normally less alert in our dream state.  So our dream people seldom launch into long intelligant rants because our unconscious is generally incapable of such creative spontaneity in the dimmer consciousness of the dream state.   In my lucid dreams, I often find myself under pressure to deliver a long discourse.  I always resist before succumbing because I can't think "on my feet" nearly as well in the dream state as I can in waking reality.  From my reading, the relatively passive nature of "guides" and other astral characters seems to signal their status as constructs of the projector's imagination rather than as independent minds capable of rapid in depth communication of material that the projector could never conjure by his own spontaneity. 

But there seem to be exceptions.  Swedenborg responds to a request to visit a business man's deceased friend.  When ES makes contact, he receives a torrid flow of communication that reveals the last conversation between the 2 friends in great detail.  These details are later confirmed.  In my view, ES's astral contact establishes a standard that we should look for in genuine contacts.  Despite the telepathic nature of the communication, rapid creativity is possible.  For ES, astral states seem just as heightened in their level of awareness as normal waking consciousness. 

I wonder if there is dream research of which I am unaware that might help us assess the genuineness of alleged astral travel.  In my lucid dreams, I can experience a variety of odors and the touch of my dream people's hands. But in my normal dreams,  I rarely experience a variety of odors or tastes or a sense of touch through body contact.  The better we grasp the limits of dream states, the better equipped we might become to discern the genuiness of OBEs and astral contacts. 

Don

Don
Your questions about how to differentiate lucid dreams from OBE's are good. I think the problem is that we all keep asking questions we haven't developed the perceptual abilities to answer yet. 

Like, maybe in order to answer that we need to be at the same level of understanding DNA research is at today: libraries of sequences that can be studied by BLAST...impossible until the invention of the computer. Whereas, in this area of conciousness, we are really still at the stage where Miescher takes the puss-filled bandages and discovers and names nuclein (1868)...and it took about 75 years after that to get to the idea it carried genetic information. Scientific work on OBE's just started.

Look how much work Rhine did to put ESP on the scientific map, and even now it isn't well-accepted (I think). But your alternative explanations to retrievals always seem to me to assume and accept the idea that ESP is real.

What is Charles Tart up to these days? I  would think he has asked the same question you have.

Or what if, in the final analysis, conciousness is some kind of force field and there is no difference between lucid dreams and OBE's. Yeah, before we answer the question, we need to say what conciousness is.